xthestreams

Helpful review - thanks! You mention the reducer is required to obtain a flat full-frame, which benefits from the 183 - wondering if an APS-C or Micro 4/3rds would give me a flat enough frame that I could skip the reducer and whatever optical issues it causes. Thoughts?

this reminds me of my quest into Mordor a year ago. a few things; - 13.7VDC is what most “12V” supplies generally output, for a variety of reasons a;ready mentioned here. Most everything seems to cope fine, or in some cases prefer slightly higher voltages - the fact this is “news” leads me to conclude you’ve possibly not metered your existing supplies, worth investing in one if yiu are about to embark down this path - think about your distribution strategy, for passive distribution, a RigRunner is a great and affordable investment - don’t forget about switching things on and off independently, having to reboot and re-home a mount when your NUC ( which will also run on 13.7V) needs a hard reboot, for example, is painful (same is true vice versa) - look into,something like a Pegasus UPB or a Denkovi for remote control switching and distribution - I eventually decided to go from “one to rule them all” to a DIN rail with four MeanWell power supplies - one for my Denkovi, one for my UPB riding on my mount/OTA (along with NUC, camera, focuser, heaters, fans etc), one 48V for the mount (paramount) and another just for the observatory/dome/lights/shutter battery charging etc - just because I like to know that it’s not all relying on one device AND they can be switched separately - AC switching to each supply controlled through an APC 7920 smart PDU, it also controls the dehumidifier and is the master switch for each DC supply - DC switching for the observatory through the Denkovi (for anything not on the OTA) perhaps a little complicated, but I’ve found it gives me the flexibility I need

Olly why did you have ot go and feed my already overworked astro-tracking paranoia?! 😉 Interestingly that is pretty much what I saw during my tracking test runs, both axis were largely recording the same error.

Not having heard a response, I recently upgraded myself and can answer my own question. Nothing about how the mount limits change, they are all very much mechanically limited by the hard stops in the mount. So no "+/- 3 hours" as with the MEII. As for the benefits - well there are a couple of minor ones; #0 - cable routing. There's simply more room for more modern cables, our goes all the ribbon cable and RS-232 leaving loads of room for Cat5, power and USB cables. It's still as PITA the drag them all through, so you really want to do this just the once - but once you have, my sense is you're good for another 10 years. #1 - you can add WiSky for wireless control. Not a huge win, but when you're like me and trying limit the amount of USB traffic and the attendant problems that too many hubs/ports brings with it - it's a nice little win, I wish more mounts and devices (focusers etc) had the same. #2 - update PEC without having to reboot/shutdown the mount. Again a minor thing, but when you're debugging/optimising PEC, you know the frustration that comes with having to add a lot of fiddling that (at least with TSX) requires you to reconnect cameras, domes, etc - all of which can be easily forgotten during a long night of auto guider tuning. #3 - inbuilt temp sensor. The main benefit here is cold weather slew adjustment (to combat increasing lube viscosity with increased torque), however it's also helpful for TPoint, updating the mounts atmospheric model as the temp drops throughout the night - how much that helps, I am not sure #4 - quiet. As Graham mentioned, at least in my and his case, the mount is now dead, eerily, silent. If you know the Paramount ME, they "sing" at 3333Hz as they fight gravity to keep the encoders in position. For whatever reason, it's now dead silent - from what I understand that's NOT what everyone has experienced, so woudl love to hear from others. Have I done something wrong? It's not a cheap upgrade, nor a critical one, but satisfying if you can afford it and/or need it due to a blown main board for example.

Old thread but you never know when someone needs advice. I own both, the Optec is a better unit in my opinion despite looking like it was designed in the 70s. It’s one great feature is that it auto homes to the same position after each restart whereas the MoonLite can get confused about where it’s at unless you build a “reset” into your startup routine, which I’ve done with a Perl script. the Optec does true temperature compensation in its controller without a computer and finally does not a-pest to,have light leaks around the draw tube the way the MoonLite does. i love Ron and his products, but the Optec guys nailed it, pity it looks like a cheap toy.

I’m in the same boat but a 12”, did you take the plunge on a flattener?

I’m thinking of the same scope for a remote dark site at Siding Springs, please share!

What was the result? I’m using a Tak and a Glatter. Glatter wins hands down.

Thanks John - CCDInspector suggested tilt, I'll look into a tilt adjuster as everything is screw connected. As for the heating - good ip, I'll dial it back and see where the lower (versus upper) limit needs to be. I *do* wish GSO had integrated a heater and temp sensor into the secondary (and primary) so that we could keep it in the Goldilocks zone. Final point, I WAS able to get the rans running nicely through the dew ports and even had a play with the variable port which did reduce the noise significantly - but as you are aware, it's one of the two ports that aren't able to be remotely controlled "on/off" so meant the fans had to run all day. Thanks again for everyone's replies - we RC folks need to stick together!

Thanks again for your help John - congrats on the dome, you must be thrilled! Thankfully my setup is on a "permanent" heavy duty tripod pier in my Nexdome - this is where everyone laughs - on the third floor balcony (so probably not the most vibration proof place for a long FL scope I know). I followed your (and Chris Woodhouse') lead and used copper tape to hide my secondary heater as well - right now I am running it on "auto" mode for a test but given it's the middle of the day and it's still running the heater I am guessing Auto isn't that brilliant (hardly surprised, but one can only hope and test). Assuming per our earlier chat you're running the fans off the regular binary on/off 12V port, they will be moving some serious air so perhaps vibration isn't the problem??? Here are two images - excuse the quality of exposures, as mentioned I've been more concerned about debugging than winning an APOD. They're of different targets, I'll try and get in another of M83 if I can find a gap between the clouds. M83 is the "old collimation, fans running hard", NGC 6744 is my updated collimation with fans running lightly - no processing on either other than stacking - but the subs are all show the same artefacts. If memory serves M83 was unguided and 30 second subs to try and eliminate drift as the culprit. NGC_6744A_Light_Luma_30_secs_001.fits

Thanks for giving me confidence! So I should be leaving them off during imaging?

Gday everyone. I’m thinking i know the answer to my question but now I’d like to know if I’m on the right track and ‘why?’, if that makes sense. I recently purchased a 12” GSO RC, despite being both new to the hobby and having been warned the were a pile of poop by more than a few people who didn’t own one - but I loves me a challenge and hate mirror flop even more, so RC it was. having been warned about Collimation I took a few image and noticed slightly rugby football shaped stars and assumed it was time to break out the Howie Glatter and have a crack. Over a period of nights I almost certainly made it worse and better to varying degrees but never got even close to round stars on anything other than the shortest of exposures. Analysis with CCDInspector at times indicted that I had a tilt problem but that if anything my Collimation was perfect - but the oval shaped stars persisted, oddly they were all in the same direction, roughly ata 30-45’ angle along my images... I assumed it might be down to drift but if anything guiding seemed to make matters worse and my PA was less than a few arc seconds out at best and the EQ8-R was barely challenged by the payload. So back to the Glatter and starvtests and a growing sense that maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew. it was around a week ago that my Pegasus Ultimate Power Box turned up. I’m an automation and integration nut and one of my ideas was to hook up the cooling fans of the RC to the variable power either from the dew heater PWM outputs or the variable voltage out port, and it was this I decided to use. in my fiddling I had left the voltage out down around 3V, the fans had gone fro their hurricane like howl to something more sedate and having forgotten all about turning them back up again, proceeded to image away. it wasn’t until I got an alarm saying I was close to the dew point that I thought”oh no the fans won’t be going fast enough tomprevent dew on the primary” that I realised all my stars had become much rounder than ever before. I now suspect the culprit was the OTAs cooling fans All along and that I should only be using them prior to imaging to bring the primary into rough equilibrium and then let nature do her thing. I had mistakenlyntho8ght the fans also kept he primary closer to ambient thus reducing the chance of dew forming on the primary, but given that I don’t know where that idea came from and GSOs non-existent documentation has nothing to say on the matter (I literally got a box with a telescope in it) I don’t feel stupid so much as really stupid. I hope that if I am right in my analysis that I have helped someone and of not, that by being corrected/educated that your answers will not only help me but others as “gifted” as I am 🙂 I assume the answer applies equally to Newts, Dobs, SCT and others with fans.

Managed to get the heater fitted but Kendrick advised the only way to do it was to trim off some of teh vulcanised rubber - but slotted in nicely. Managed to control teh fan speed with the variable voltage output, next step is working out how to integrate with EKOS to vary speed according to ambient temp and dew points. Have yet to try using the PWM ports to see if I could accomplish teh same, mainly because I need to make an RCA to 2.1mm adapter and haven't had time. In other news, how did you mount the UPB to the top dovetail plate? The Pegasus mounting bracket "dovetail" adapter doesn't have an obvious way to connect - feels like I might have wasted my hard earned buying that!

Thanks for the links! It now makes a LITTLE more sense, I didn't realise I could "stack" images within CCDI to get an aggregate view of the distortions - the new run of data suggests my "notorious" GSO RC12 scope is okay but image tilt is the issue. More work to do but feeling less paranoid.

I have to admit I have the same irrational fear of globular clusters as others do of clowns. Everything about them defies my sense of "space" - they looks like a crowded mess that just shouldn't exist in a universe dominated by gravity. Agree with John's sentiment, they seem to be something that writers on astrophysics seem to gloss over when it comes to explaining how they came to be and more importantly, still are.

I, glad it’s not just me! I don’t u der stand CCDI at all despite really wanting to be able to trust it.

Okay, I must try harder with the heater. I’m going to try experimenting with adjusting fan speeds to see what it does to mirror temps vs. noise, I’ve assumed GSO knew what they were doing when they selected them but some data sure would be nice

Nice work John - loved to see what you've done to get the system all integrated, inspiring. The work with teh spider was inspired, where did you find a heater that fit between the secondary and the spiders, from what I can see the Kendrick's are too thick to get under. Also wondering what you've done to Ulitmate Power Box to control the telescope cooling fans, have you had a chance to look at controlling their speed or do they run flat chat the entire night?

Mine arrives tomorrow with a GSO RC12 slung off the back of it. let’s see how it goes when the clouds clear, review should be in time for the JWST launch 😉

Cheaper? The ESATTO seems way more expensive to me here in Oz - nearly twice the price (but to be fair I am assuming that's not including the hokey controller from ML and using a Pegasus UPBV2 to control directly, so umm, maybe it IS about the same after all - skulks away.....

Old thread but I am thinking about doing this myself, did you notice any other benefits from the upgrade? the ME II can track further past the meridian, does this have anything to do with the 5000 board or is it a mechanical difference?